Bulletproof Business Model is a service of BluGrowth Partners

Preparing for a loan, acquisition, or sale?

We identify sales and operational risks that Underwriting will flag

Bulletproof Business Model is for small manufacturers and distributors to understand what is holding back growth and quality of earnings.

What makes it Bulletproof?

No matter what is happening out there, you get growth in here

The strongest business model always wins; especially during disruptions and uncertainty. 

Fewer than 5% of companies have the strength to win; those that do increase economic value by 20% or more – Bain and Co. 

Tariffs? Supply chain disruptions? Consumer sentiment? Inflation? Interest Rates? None of it matters when your are bulletproof. 

  • Yes. Growth in any economy. Consumers and businesses are always buying something.

Resilient growth that makes the underwriter sit up a say, “Yes, that’s a good business.”

Whether you are refinancing, getting a line to buy inventory, buying new machinery, expanding through an acquisition, or looking to sell, the underwriters are going assess the Quality of Earnings. 

Nearly 90% of acquisition deals fail to close, almost always in a disagreement on valuation multiple

A bulletproof business model can add 1-2 turns to your multiple 

  • Valuation Multiple is the price set as a multiple of earnings. If your profits are $1 million at a multiple of 5.0, your valuation is $5 million. Earnings can be Sellers Discretionary Earnings (SDE), EBITDA, or Net Cash Flows.

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What we do for resilient growth and high quality earnings

Assessment + QoE

Find out what is holding back growth and write up the Quality of Earnings (QoE)

3-4 weeks

Improve QoE

Fix only what is needed with people who have done this before; improve your QoE

Usually takes about 3-6 months

Resilient Growth

Give you the tools to measure, maintain, and repair yourself; keep your high QoE

What you get

Clear, easy to use report on what is holding back growth 

  • Assessment on Quality of Earnings to use with underwriters for lenders, refinancing, or selling to private buyers (private equity, MBO, private buyer, or family transfer) 

  • Recommendations on how to remove those constraints; how to make the business bulletproof 

  • Roadmap to double cash flows in five years 

  • Most companies, after making these changes, see 1-2 turns higher valuation multiples 

  • This is not software, not AI, not high-price Ivy League MBA. Just real practitioners who understand what you are up against. 

  • A valuation is usually determined using multiple criteria:

    • The industry

    • The size (larger companies get higher multiples)

    • The Financial Performance (are you more efficient or more profitable than others in your industry)

    • The Quality of Earnings (see below)

  • Quality of Earnings is a subjective assessment from the underwriter based on criteria the underwriter feels is important. This might include customer concentration, owner involvement, or supplier contracts. Each underwriter has their own list.

  • We are looking at HOW you make money across the business model - your sales and operations process. We work closely with your CFO to dig into how the sales and operations affect the financial performance.

  • No. We are working with you to make the business model (the sales and operations process) more resilient and higher quality. We are not doing any financial structuring.

How we do it

  1. Leadership team interviews 
    Your business is unique. Although we’ve seen hundreds of different organizations, what you do is more complex than most people think. 

  2. Self-scoring on the 6 elements 
    Before you see the measures, let’s get a baseline on where we think the constraints are. 

  3. Financial measures on the 6 Bulletproof elements 
    Objective measures to benchmarks on what is constraining growth. 

  4. Written report 
    No AI, no software. A real human with experience looks at the data and writes a report for you, including Quality of Earnings assessment and Recommendations. 

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Where we’ve done this 

We’ve worked with dozens of organizations to remove constraints to growth 

What makes a business model bulletproof?

Value

Waterline

Flywheel

Optionality

Sustainability

Alignment

Do you have pricing power? 

Are your resilient sales covering your overheads? 

Is your customer-generated sales sufficient to grow? 

Do you have growth options on the shelf ready to go? 

Are you growing your Triple Bottom Line: People, Planet, Profits? 

Is the entire organization working to the single most important goal: on-time, every time?